NOTE TO EDITORS AND NEWS DIRECTORS: News media representatives are invited to view live televised coverage and commentary of a major extra-solar discovery announcement on Tuesday, Aug. 31, at 10 a.m. PDT. The coverage will be broadcast live from NASA Headquarters in Washington on NASA Television and can be viewed in the lobby of the N-201 auditorium at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley. Following the briefing, Dr. Jack Lissauer, a NASA Ames planetary scientist, will be available for interviews. NASA Television can be seen on AMC- 6, Transponder 9 located at 72 degrees west longitude with 3880.0 MHz. vertical polarization and audio at 6.8 MHz.

RELEASE: 04-79ARNASA TO ANNOUNCE MAJOR DISCOVERY OF NEW PLANETS

A team of planet hunters will announce its discovery of a new class of planets located beyond our solar system at a NASA Science Update at 10 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, Aug. 31.The discovery represents a significant andmuch-anticipated advance in the hunt for extra-solar planets.

"These strange fires were not restrictedto the IL-WI-MI triangle centered aroundthe southern end of Lake Michigan. Becauseof the slowness of communication in 1871,it was not immediately recognized that thefires of October 8, 1871 were scatteredover parts of seven states and Canada andmay have caused as many as 10,000 deaths."

I would be interested to know where the claim that the

fire actually started in seven states and Canada simultaneously. From what I seen written in well-researched books on the 1871 fire, i.e. "Michigan On Fire" by Betty Sodders in 1997, the fact of the matteris that fires outside IL-WI-MI area were occurring and

started well before October 8 and had been occurring all Fall because of the hot and dry weather that had created a drought that was devastating in its ownright.If a person looks at the historical record, he or she would find that it is an absolute misrepresentation of

it in stating that these fires all startedsimultaneously with the October 8 fire. The so-called "instantaneous"/ "simultaneous" nature of the fire, from what I have seen, is pure fiction created by shoddy research and wishful thinking on the part of advocates of the comet

impact theory, who seem to be rather ill-informed of the actual chronology of forest fires in 1871.

For example, a person can read "The Fire thatDestroyed Holland, Michigan" at:

In terms of the so-called "simultaneous" nature of the1871 fire, the web page noted:

"There had already been a threat of dangerearlier in the week. Fires kept smolderingand burned barns and houses, but the dangerseemed to be far from the city. Then onSunday, October 9, there were reports thata threatening forest fire was coming."

and

"The community at the time was populated with2400 residents and for many days previous,these residents had battled and beaten manysmall fires that had erupted throughout thetown."

It is quite clear that fires were starting within the area of the 1871 fire days, even weeks, before October8.The fire of 1871 simply didn't magically appear onOctober8, 1871 out of nowhere but was preceded by numeroussmaller fires days, even weeks, before it occurred.

Even more interesting comments about the 1871 fire can be found in "History & Ecology of Fire in Michigan

"It was not a single fire but a combination of hundreds of fires, small and large, that had been burning unattended for weeks, only to flare up and unite when conditions became acute."

This statement totally demolishes the case for a meteorite or comet, as the 1871 didn't start on Oct.8, 1871. Rather the "1871 fire" on October 8 occurredwhen it exploded into a firestorm when fires only afterburning for days, even weeks, before that date. Oct 8 wassimply the point that these fires, as they coalesced,exceeded the critical mass needed to explode into massive firestorm.

The historical record also clearly demonstrates the source of these fires. For example, the "History & Ecology of Fire in Michigan Wildland Fire In Michigan"

web page stated:

"Set carelessly or by settlers in clearing land, fires burned everywhere, and ran uncontrolled into the woods and swamps where they continued to smolder."

"In the fall of 1871, the ground was verydry after the long summer. The summer hadbeen very hot and dry and some areas hadn'thad rain since June. In Holland, firesbegan in the piles of sawdust, waste wood,and finished lumber in the yards of thecity's several sawmills, and the windsquickly spread the flames throughout thetown. The small spark ignited the pilesof wood and spread to become one of Michigan's most widespread forest fire."

These quotes point out the fact that that Michigan washaving problems with outbreaks of smaller fires, weeks

before October 8. The fire simply didn't magically, simultaneously start on that date, but ratherinnumerable small fires, which had been burning for weeks before October 8, came together on that date. The fact that smaller fires were burning many days prior to October8 refutes the claim that everything simultaneously burst

into flame on that date and the so-called anomalous nature of the fire. It is quite obvious that longbefore October 8, this region was having major problems with outbreaks of multiple, ongoing fires.

The "History & Ecology of Fire in Michigan Wildland Fire In Michigan" stated:

"Michigan was extensively logged toward the end of the 19th century. The White Pine that had once covered Michigan was cut, followed by the hardwood forests, and large expanses of slash (the branches and other debris left after logging) were left behind. Many areas were cleared for farming, and the vegetation was burned to dispose of it. Several catastrophic fires resulted from the indiscriminate burning of slash following logging and land clearing for agriculture."

and

"In the summer of 1871, a drought occurred over much of the Great Lakes region. Slash and debris from logging and land clearing became tinder-dry during the months without rain. From early August no rain fell, pastures and gardens dried up, wells went dry, streams shrank to a mere trickle, and crops failed."

These conditions, i.e. the abundance of fuel, createdby careless logging techniques and forest landmanagement;the hot and dry weather and massive drought; and thecareless use of fire to clear land made for an ideal situation for the development of a catastrophic fire.

In fact, a fire similar in magnitude to the 1871 fire occurred tens years later in September of 1881 in the Thumb area of Michigan. It was more serve, caused more

damage, and made more people to be homeless than the 1871 fire.

About the 1881 fire, the "History & Ecology of Fire in

Michigan Wildland Fire In Michigan" stated:

"Like the 1871 fire, the fire of 1881 came at the end of an extremely severe drought and was the result of hundreds of land-clearing fires whipped into a seething cauldron of flame by high winds."

This discussion reminds me of a "mysterious" sinking of the Sandra that allegedly sank in a calm seawithout any distress signal as described by Charles Berlitz in

his book "The Bermuda Triangle". When Larry Kusche looked into this disappearance, he found that the ship

was half as long as the book stated and it disappeared

in the middle of a hurricane. In this case, as in the 1871 fires, the mystery disappears when the misinformation and folklore is replaced by documented facts.

Regional Deforestation Associated with Australasian Tektite Fall??

A recent paper, Haines et al. (2004), described fluvial flood deposits containing abundant "abundant organic debris, including whole tree trunks and mammal bones", that its authors interpret to be "the effects of regional deforestation, increased run off and erosion, and other environmental disruptions expected in the aftermath of a major impact event."

Saturday, 14 August 2004

Source Stratum of Georgia Tektites Possibly Found

The latest issue of Geology (Geological Society of America) has a paper about the identification of grains of shocked quartz in a sand bed within Upper Eocene strata of Georgia. The paper argued that they might be from the Chesapeake Bay Impact and occur within in the source layer for Georgia tektites.

"We report the discovery of shocked quartz grains in upper Eocene sediments from the Coastal Plain of east-central Georgia. ... These grains were collected from a sand layer near the base of the Twiggs Clay Member of the Dry Branch Formation and most likely are ejecta from the Chesapeake Bay impact, which occurred between 35.7 and 36.0 Ma. ... This horizon could represent the source stratum for the Georgia tektites ..."

"Members of the scientific expedition of the Siberian state foundation Tunguska Space Phenomenon say they have managed to uncover blocks of an extraterrestrial technical device. The space body, which was later called the Tunguska meteorite, fell down on Earth on June 30th 1908, 65 kilometers off the Vanavara settlement, the Evenkiya republic."

My wife, who from Russia, cautions the readers of this

list to take what is written in modern Pravada with considerable amount of skepticism. From herexperience, it isn't much different from the Parvada of Soviettimes.

>From what I have seen, it has the habit of publishing

various unverified and sensationalist news storieswith a large content of junk science that would be at home in New Age magazines, i.e. "Atlantis Rising", which regularly publish poorly written articles about various types of junk science. i.e. Antarctic being the site of Atlantis and Hindu Old Earth creationism.

An example of such an article is " "Black Holes" Devour People", which was published in Pravada on April 26,2 004. It can found at:

" "I blame the so-called "black holes" for disappearance of people", says Jane Lindsett, Professor, California University, San Francisco. "Periodically, time and space on Earth refract, and entire cities may find themselves in a different dimension, which sometimes "spits them out". There are scores of such "black holes " on Earth, and people frequently get in them. A decade ago, a 36-year-old Lydia Kimfield, Androver (Texas), disappeared during her visit to the doctor. An hour later her body was found one thousand kilometers away from the city. An autopsy showed that she had died two months earlier! In the state of New Mexico there is a road on which 19 people disappeared without a trace, the last case being in 1997. The road runs across the desert, which can be observed from air. The vanished people might have been carried over to the ocean or woods where they perished. Objects cannot travel across space, that's why ships were found vacated, but the belongings of those who disappeared were in place"."

These articles provide examples of the complete lackof any vetting for junk science by Pravada in what itpublishes. Thus, a person should have a healthy skepticism ofwhat in the way of the various "science" articles is publishedin it.

Finally, a person might want to note that Lenin stillappearson the banner at the top of its page, which says muchabout it philosophy and how it has changed since Soviettimes.

"The current most popular mechanisms for forming chondrules in a nebular setting are radiation emitted by the protosun in the X-wind setting or shock waves propagated in the protoplanetary disk. In the latter case, chondrule formation may have contributed to the first stages of accretion, which would have helped preserve the chemical complementarity between chondrules and matrix. It is important that the chemical and isotopic properties, and even the petrology, of chondrules be reassessed in order to allow the development of chondrule formation models that better fit these constraints."

Sunday, 8 August 2004

Fireball Crashes Into Desert East of Bullhead City, Nevada

While talking with a friend in Nevada, he mentionedthat he heard a report of a firball crashing into the desert near Bullhead City, Nevada. He joked thatI should come look for meteorites there instead ofLouisiana.

Unfortunately, all I could find were some fragmentsof text about it on the Internet. What I could findwas:

Dare to Add venture Fur Ther???

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